The Okoa Project.

Dedicated to increasing access to medical care

The Problem

Rural villages in Tanzania and other developing countries are often miles from medical care facilities. The vehicles that do exist, often motorcycles and dirt bikes, are not suited to carry a patient in need of medical attention. As a result, community members are not able to get to the hospital fast enough in times of crisis. Due to cost and road conditions, conventional ambulance services are not a viable option. This gives the people living out in rural villages essentially no viable option to get the professional health care that they need. The patients do not get the needed medical attention, and the hospital centers do not serve the community in the intended way.

Our Solution

We want to find a way to connect existing health care options to rural villages, using existing community resources. Our goal is to create a motorcycle ambulance with a dynamic attachment mechanism to fit onto any motorcycle in the area. This would turn any motorcycle vehicle in the village to become a life-saving patient transport device. The ambulance is made of locally sourced, affordable materials to transport one driver, one patient, and one additional person. With the addition of our product to the villages in Tanzania, we hope to be able to reduce fatalities and improve quality of life, using a realistic, affordable, and versatile patient transport device.